.•^ 



The Increasing Debt of 
History to Science 



BY 



ARCHER B. HULBERT 



^mtxitan Jlniiquatian ^otwil| 



The Increasing Debt of 
History to Science 

BY 
ARCHER B. HULBERT 



Reprinted from the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 
FOR April 1919 



WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS, U.S.A. 

PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY 

1920 






The DA^^s Press 
Worcester, Mass. 






THE INCREASING DEBT OF HISTORY 
TO SCIENCE 



By Archer B. Hulbert 

A generation ago Professor Macy said ''The scientist 
wrecks his high ideal, truth-loving and truth-telling, 
the instant he enters politics and history, where 
beliefs and not external phenomena are the dominant 
factors." 

Since those words were uttered the natural sciences 
have been putting historical theories under the 
magnifying-glass and in the test tube to a degree that 
is worthy of remark; from what has been accomplished 
and is on the eve of accomplishment, it seems plain 
that on several sides American history is undergoing 
a scientific clarification that will tend toward an 
accuracy not hitherto attained. A glance over this 
field of activity is reassuring and provokes interesting 
speculation as to the future. 

In the generation mentioned we have seen a marked 
advance in the science of geography and geographical 
interpretations of history. This phase of activity may 
well be mentioned first because of the lesson it carries. 

The Royal Geographical Society of Great Britain 
was formed in the middle of the Nineteenth Century 
as the result of colonial trade expansion and the new 
problems which that expansion brought forward. At 
about the same time came the formation of our 
American Geographical and Statistical Society, of 
which George Bancroft was elected first president in 
1851. The original purpose of these organizations, 
as indicated, was the study of geography and its 
application to the development of commerce, the 
distribution of animal and vegetable productions and 
of the human race. The first paper read before our 



American society was on ''The Productions and Trade 
of Paraguay." The importance of such studies as 
these from a commercial standpoint was soon recog- 
nized, and the societies mentioned became clearing- 
houses too important in their relationship to national 
growth to remain the monopoly of scientific bodies. 
Government departments took up the work and 
official bulletins and consular reports became the 
mediums of information. This first service of the 
geographer was a notable one. 

At the beginning of the present century we find 
geologist and geographer combining to give us geo- 
graphical interpretations of history, and the appear- 
ance of studies on "Geographic Conditions" and 
"Geographic Influences." The Humes of American 
history were being enlightened by the MahafTys. 
Perhaps these enthusiasts proved too much; in any 
event the reaction came in academic circles, led 
informally by Professor Burr, that master of winning 
and polite, but no less caustic analysis, and resulted in 
a number of valuable conferences in the American 
Historical Association. The conference on the rela- 
tion of geography to history presided over by Professor 
Turner in 1907 was constructive and of especial 
clarifying value. Here Professor Burr and Professor 
George B. Adams pointed out that geography was but 
one factor in explaining history, and that no more in 
history than in mathematics can the outcome be 
inferred from one factor alone. Emphasis was laid 
on the fact that geographers were using ambiguous and 
inexact phraseology — as in the word "location, " which 
might denote either an act, or the result of an act. 
"To impute action or causation, influence or control," 
Professor Burr was quoted, "to things which are inert 
is a figure of speech which gives vigor to style but 
which always involves a fallacy; and when to Nature 
is imputed what is planned and achieved by man, the 
sufferer from the fallacy is history." Most of the 
matters, said Professor Adams, which the geographers 



call upon us to include in history are conditions not 
causes; he warned all and sundry not to be deceived 
into thinking that it was the waterfall which ground 
the wheat. 

Two results from these discussions may be noted; 
one, an immediate result, was the common recognition 
of the lack of cartographical material for the teaching 
of history and the undertaking on the part of the 
American Historical Association of the preparation of 
an historical atlas; the other result, of more funda- 
mental importance, was the recognition of the fact 
that when dealing in generalities, and embracing too 
wide a scope, geographical interpretations quite 
failed to elicit confidence. In illustration may be 
cited a chapter of a book which treats of a certain 
river valley as the gateway to the continent. Geo- 
logically the thesis is sound; historically it gives a most 
erroneous impression. Commonwealths beyond the 
AUeghenies were admitted to the Union almost, if not 
quite, a decade before the route mentioned began to 
resemble a thoroughfare of migration, and Lewis and 
Clark had gone to the Pacific before it became well- 
known; in the canal and railway era the passage-way 
rose to first importance and still maintains its prestige; 
but for the fifty crucial years of expansion into the 
West (1750-1800) it was, historically, the most effec- 
tually barred door in the eastern half of the country. 

At the present time we find the study of geographi- 
cal influences, refined in the fire of criticism, making 
enormous strides as applied locally to specific prob- 
lems; types of such studies of great value are repre- 
sented by such papers as Professor Posey's, ''The 
Influence of Geographic Factors in the Development 
of Minnesota"^ and Professor Sioussat's "Memphis 
as a Gateway to the West. "^ One needs but to scan 
the bibliography in Vol. Ill of the Annals of the New 
York Academy of Sciences to be impressed with the 

^Minnesota History Bulletin. II. Aug. 1918. 
^Tennessee Historical Magazine, III. Mar., June 1917. 



6 

value to historians of the work being done by such 
men as Brigham, Tarr, Tower, and others. From this 
brief review of the influence of the study of physio- 
graphic factors on the teaching and understanding of 
history we see clearly the debt we owe to scientists 
who adhere closely to the fine art of truth-loving and 
truth-telling; their factors are of genuine importance 
so long as they are treated as factors; the conditions 
they present greatly enrich our understanding until 
they are confounded with causes. Historians of the 
Parkman type, who can command the insight of the 
geologist and topographer, may rewrite many sections 
of American history; the study of the relationship of 
the navigability of our rivers with reference to the 
inland advance of agriculture ; the relationship of such 
barriers as the Berkshires to New England expansion; 
the rivalry of Memphis, St. Louis and Chicago as 
trans-continental railway termini, suggest types of 
study of local conditions which are being made on 
truly scientific lines. It is only when the historian 
turns tyro topographist, climatologist, botanist or 
hydrographer and becomes ''possessed with the devil 
of one idea," as Professor Parks of Andover once said 
of the abolitionists, that we are in danger of believing 
that the multiplicand, by some sudden art of necro- 
mancy, has become the product. 

In the triple alliance of the climatologist, botanist, 
and geologist we have a combination that will go far 
in clarifying our understanding of American expansion 
and the distribution of population. The stock ex- 
ample of settling a long-disputed historical problem 
with a magnifying-glass is, perhaps, too well known to 
bear repetition. Its value as a type of scientific 
checking of historical interpretation is too great, how- 
ever, to be overlooked here. Dr. Fernald of the 
Gray Herbarium was too ardent a lover of truth- 
loving and truth-telling to swallow the story, per- 
petuated by a long line of historians, of Norsemen 
filling their ships with grapes on the New England 



coast in springtime. Unawed by the array of Norse 
"towers" and other monuments, this scientist took 
back to Iceland the words of the Norse sagas and 
found that ''vinber" meant mountain cranberries, 
not grapes; that "hveiti" meant strand wheat, not 
Indian corn; and that ''mosurr" meant canoe-birch, 
not maple.^ In such a way was Bancroft's ancient 
contempt and James P. Dexter's earnest groping in 
his etymological laboratory made honourable by a 
scientist who located ''Wineland the Good" between 
Labrador and the lower St. Lawrence. It is interest- 
ing to note, as a matter of professional gossip, that 
Dr. Fernald, so far from becoming "possessed with 
the devil of one idea" and continuing the ravages of 
his historical research, has rather made light of his 
valuable contribution to history and refused election 
to a very prominent historical society on the plea that 
he was a scientist and not in the least an historian. 

The fact remains, however, that climatic conditions, 
plant life and agriculture are being taken into account 
today as never before, and to these we may well look, 
if not for such brilliant checking as was afforded by 
Dr. Fernald, at least for many fresh and reliable 
explanations for the distribution of pioneer populations. 

The work of Ellsworth Huntington has commanded 
wide attention despite the criticism which it has 
attracted. In his Civilization and Climate he shows, 
for instance, how the advancement of the American 
Indians was checked by the fact that the regions which 
were otherwise best for them were also best for grass. 
This seemingly slight climatic coincidence, joined 
with the fact that the Indians had no tools of iron and 
no beasts of burden, prevented the growth of a stable 
civilization in the northern United States. Another 
set of climatic conditions, which today, strangely 
enough, are far from the most favorable, caused the 
vegetation of regions farther south to be much more 

^M. L. Fernald, "Notes on the Plants of Wineland the Good." Rhodora, XII 
(Feb. 1910) 17-38. 



tractable, for no tough sod could grow. Hence 
agriculture was_ possible in southern regions, and our 
forerunners in America were able to have a much more 
noteworthy flowering of civilization in the southern 
United States than in the northern, and a still greater 
in Mexico. 

In the same author's Civilization and Climate and 
The Red Man's Continent he shows how the Indians 
reached their highest pitch of advancement in three 
highly diverse ways corresponding to three equally 
diverse types of environment. The first was the 
irrigation civilization of the Southwest and Mexico. 
The second found its chief exponent in the Haidas of 
the Pacific coast near Vancouver Islands, where there 
grew up a type of culture dependent upon an abundant 
supply of fish for food and the easy lines of communica- 
tion furnished by safe and easy waterways among the 
islands. The third was the cruel, but highly vigorous 
culture of the Iroquois, centering in a region which 
stimulates intense activity, but which at the same 
time had the great handicap of having a climate which 
made permanent agriculture almost impossible for the 
Indians because the growth of grass in their fields 
compelled them to move at frequent intervals. 

The second instance to which he refers is in World 
Power and Evolution where he shows the remarkable 
agreement between the curve of climatic pulsations as 
worked out in Asia, the Mediterranean regions, and 
California on the one hand, and the rise and fall of 
prosperity and activity in Rome on the other. In his 
opinion this parallelism is one of the most interesting 
features of the investigation of climatic changes. 

Another coincidence of this same kind is that the 
Mohammedan outburst, as Professor Huntington has 
shown in "Palestine and its Transformation," came 
just at the driest time known to history, while the 
out pouring from Central Asia under Ghengis Khan came 
at another extremely dry time. Doubtless other 
causes would have led to a stirring of the nations under 



9 

the impulse of Mohammed and Ghengis, but the 
extreme dryness and consequent hunger seem to have 
played an important part in making these particular 
outbursts from the desert so much more serious than 
any other. 

Enthusiasms, such as shown by Professor Hunting- 
ton, must be excused because they are explorations 
into new fields and hold a modicum of plausibility. 
It is easy to say that he builds too great an edifice on 
a small array of foundation facts. But many of his 
leads are valuable, and from them we may come to profit 
to a degree unguessed by those who minimize the net 
results to date. 

While too much attention should not be given to the 
atmospheric pressure in the halls of political conven- 
tions, not even the Constitutional Convention of 1787, 
climatic and soil conditions which favored the growth 
of certain trees, plants, and grasses will give us 
clearer explanations of westward American migration 
than we now have. When the Watauga Region in the 
Southern Alleghenies was found to be a second New 
York State as a butter and cream region, but removed 
so far southward that cattle would winter unharmed 
in the open, it became a magnet of migration; the 
strong argument in building the Ohio canals (which 
benefited all the Great Lake States equally with 
Ohio) was that they gave a northward outlet for 
grains which frequently turned sour in the long voyage 
to semi- tropic New Orleans; the position of the most 
northerly ice-free port on the Mississippi River was a 
dominant factor in railway building in the Middle 
West in much the way Port Arthur dominated 
Russian advance upon Manchuria. 

Professor Turner, a generation ago, called attention 
to the limestone pathways leading southward from the 
old granary of America, Pennsylvania, to the limestone 
oases of Tennessee and Kentucky. The plant life of 
these limestone districts exerted far-reaching in- 
fluences. In the wheat-fields of Pennsylvania the 



10 

English hunter was crossed with the ''dog-horses" 
(as one of General Braddock's officers described them) 
of Virginia, giving us first the sturdy packhorse of the 
Indian traders and then the strong wagon-and-coach- 
horse. These animals arose from out these wheat 
fields as naturally as did the McCormick reaper. 
Here, too, was first seen that lumbering vehicle of 
American migration, the Conestoga wagon, as different 
from the Concord coach as the civilizations which lay 
back of them. The place of this limestone zone in the 
history of American transportation is worthy of 
emphasis; here was built the first American canal; 
here plied Fitch's first steamboat; here was built the 
first steam engine to run on a highway; here was built 
the first American stone road. 

Migration westward followed unconciously vegeta- 
tive zones, soils producing nut-bearing trees and mast, 
the pea-vine valleys and blue grass meadows and 
balds; the Shenandoah Valley in turn became the 
granary of Virginia and the pathway of migration on 
its centripetal route by Cumberland Gap to the 
Kentucky blue grass zone. When this movement 
reached Staunton and the blue grass regions of the 
New and Greenbriar valleys it would naturally have 
struck straight to its evident goal the Ohio Valley. 
But the coal measures of the Great Kanawha and Big 
Sandy blocked the road, sending the movement on the 
line of greatest vegetative attraction across both the 
James and New rivers to the five limestone valley 
tributaries of the Tennessee and thus to Nashville and 
Boonesboro. Kephart has cited the razorback hog as 
a pilot of this migrating army which made possible the 
timely occupation of Kentucky on the eve of the 
Revolution. He gives good proof that you could not 
drive that dogmatic, four-legged Calvinist out of his 
vegetative zone of least resistance and emphasizes 
that his flesh was the mainstay of the migratory horde. 

In proof of the domination of these influences of 
plant life one needs only to turn to the formal and 



11 

informal propaganda of promoters and land com- 
panies of the era of expansion into the trans- Allegheny 
wilderness. Weather conditions, length of seasons, 
soils, and kinds and dimensions of shrubs and trees 
were uniformly cited in proof of the excellence of one 
region over another. Washington's measurement of 
the giant sycamore on the Ohio in 1770 (done at the 
risk of his reputation for truth-telling) was intended 
to indicate merely that such was the fertility of the 
soil (which he desired to rent for 999 years at a good 
rental) that it could produce trees forty-five feet in 
circumference. 

The fact that land companies rivalled each other in 
pointing out the pharmaceutical superiority of the 
growths on lands offered for sale reminds us that the 
relationship of migration to disease and choice of 
settlements has not been scientifically developed. 
The effects of malaria, miasma, and kindred diseases 
to settlement making and pioneering is practically an 
untouched field; the failure of many a prospector and 
colonizing enterprise, the rise and decay of numerous 
towns in unhealthy environments, and possibly much 
of the so-called wanderlust of the rovers who led the 
pioneer advance, might be explained more fully by the 
student of bacteria than by the historian. These 
insidious influences had farther reaching effects than 
have been recognized, influencing mind as well as 
body, religion as well as diet, politics as well as 
complexion. 

The hysteria, for instance, which accompanied 
periods of religious excitement along our frontiers was 
part and parcel with the fanaticism which led the 
Indian ''medicine men" to exert such ghoulish control 
upon their morbid, distraught proselytes, attaining a 
terrible success that, in one instance, at least, affected 
a stolid representative of the white race. The 
monotony of life in the half-lights of the forests, with 
its perpetual tendency to provoke the ailments uni- 
versal to the Indian, pulmonary disorder, together 



12 

with the inroads of malarial germs, gave to the pioneer 
race sallowness of complexion and, together with a 
limited diet, a gauntness of frame, which character- 
ized them so commonly that the highlander of today 
in Appalachia feels disgraced by a fat son. The 
oppressiveness of the monotonous silence of forest 
life affected mind and, without doubt, body; this was 
particularly true of women, the mothers of the children 
of the wilderness, and their sons were the weaker for 
it; this, perhaps as much as the toil of wilderness 
existence, may account for the lessened longevity on 
the part of the pioneer crusaders of our young West. 

The lack of zoological maps of the west likewise 
hinders our understanding of the distribution of 
earliest populations. Maps showing clear lines mark- 
ing the habitat of the valuable fur-bearing animals 
wdll measurably add to our understanding of fur 
company and international rivalries and the retarda- 
tions in occupation of zones which did not exert that 
magnetic influence. Such maps will make much 
clearer the explanation of the artificial tangents on 
which numerous migrations struck out and the 
curiosities of the haphazard occupation of our north- 
west; the mapping of these zones with reference to the 
fertile agricultural regions on the one hand, and of the 
gold and silver areas on the other, will clear up much 
of the haziness in our understanding of the social 
movements from the former to the latter. 

In the realm of hydrography and aerography the 
progress made in the past decade is instinct with 
promise. Those of us who have scripturally believed 
the winds fitting symbols of fickleness are a little 
confused to hear them classed among stable and 
'dependable natural phenomena. Certain trade winds 
we have known are as regular as the seasons, but 
to be told that the great air currents can be relied upon 
generallj^ to aid in explaining the seemingly whimsical 
routes of early explorers and help us to understand 



13 

their landfalls and omissions as well as commissions 
is altogether new. 

This work, begun by Professor George Davidson of 
the University of California, is being continued by 
Director Alexander McAdie of the Blue Hill Observa- 
tory. The work of these men has already made much 
clearer the facts concerning the discoveries of Van- 
couver, Drake, and Cooke on the Pacific Coast. By 
a careful comparison of the original logs kept by these 
explorers with our present knowledge of air currents, 
tides, fogs, sea-floor, and coast-lines, these scientists 
have proven that the "Golden Hinde, "for instance, 
could not have reached the latitude of 48° North as has 
been uniformly stated and repeated in as late an 
authority as the last edition of the Britannica. They 
give us certain proof of scientific accuracy that the 
farthest point reached was 43° North; that Drake 
could not have discovered San Francisco Bay but, 
rather, found his anchorage behind Point Reyes, which 
region he christened "Nova Albion."^ 

It is not unlikely that many of the voyages of the 
old explorers will be examined in the light of our 
growing knowledge of air and ocean currents, tides, 
fogs, and sea-floor, and that many old-time puzzles, 
such as Cartier's missing the mouth of the St. Law- 
rence in his first voyage, will be scientifically explained. 

As factors in this recasting of opinions the progress 
in study of marine life will not be without its value; 
we know vaguely that forms of life frequenting the 
Gulf Stream differ entirely from those which are 
found in the submerged Arctic Current on the one 
hand or in the Sargasso Sea, on the other. The 
proof that Columbus and other explorers were depend- 
ent, or the reverse, on the Gulf Stream for finding the 
Caribbeans, lies largely with the biologists and orni- 
thologists as well as with the hydrographers. 



^"An examination of the Early Voyages . . . 1539 to 1603," U. S Coast and 
Geodetic Survey, Appendix No. 7; "Nova AlVjion — 1579," Proceedings of the American 
Antiquarian Society, v. 28. 1918. 



14 

More than a decade ago Professor Bassett showed 
clearly how the study of the coast of the Carolinas 
could be made to clarify historical interpretation. 
Probably it will not be long before the science of 
hydrography will establish a comparison, for instance, 
between our two great gulfs, the Gulf of Mexico and 
the Gulf of St. Lawrence with reference to tides, 
currents and sea-floor. No history with which I am 
acquainted compares those two great waterway 
avenues into the heart of America ; we know in general 
that the ocean tides sweep a thousand miles up one 
river and only about a dozen miles up the other; that 
one river flows clear from a rocky archean highland 
leaving no deposit at its mouth, while the other brings 
down its alluvial valley four hundred million tons of 
silt and clay annually to block and metamorphose its 
innumerable mouths. These vague outstanding facts 
when scientifically developed by men fitted to speak 
with accuracy, will make plain why the St. Lawrence 
became the key to the interior and would have done so 
had there been no Great Lakes at its head; also why 
the Mississippi was such an enigma to explorers and 
was never ascended by Europeans even in small 
craft until thirty years after the Great Lakes were 
comparatively well known. 

In this connection the soil-carrying power of water 
has produced sociological results in the way of town 
and city planting that are worthy of study in numer- 
ous instances. The more rapid a stream's current the 
larger are the soil particles which can be carried in 
suspension. If the current is moving three inches per 
second, fine clay and silt will be deposited; at eight 
inches a second, sand the size of linseed will be de- 
posited. At a rate of sixteen inches a second pebbles 
an inch in diameter will be transported, while water 
flowing two feet per second will carry stones the size 
of a hen's egg. 

This study of the relation of soil to velocity of 
streams explains why alluvial lands have varied 



15 

stratified deposits as the currents have varied, and 
why the richest of soils are likely to be deposited in 
the backwaters and the coarser near river banks; thus 
the draining of inland lagoons and swamps discovers 
exceedingly rich soil. Deltas are usually most pro- 
ductive. If streams at flood tide, bearing much 
deposit, are blocked from entering other streams to 
which they are tributary, they become still water and 
deposit their soil-burden in their channel or upon the 
surrounding bottom lands. These channel deposits 
are washed into the main river when the blockade is 
removed, and, sinking, form bars. 

Excellent soils Lt all deltas had a direct bearing on 
making such spots choice land for the squatter or 
prospector. The bars in the main river added to the 
strategic character of the mouths of streams as sites 
of settlements and, often, of towns. The bars in the 
main stream lessened its depth and made fording 
safer. The main fords were located by the larger 
game animals at such points, and men, following their 
well-laid paths, found and used these fords. Fre- 
quently high water rendered the ford impassable 
especially after vehicles came into use. Thus the 
ferry-boat was needed and the business of ferrying was 
a profitable one. Ownership of land at such points 
was, therefore, doubly advantageous, giving the 
owner a lucrative employment at odd hours. As 
vehicle travel became common, the ferry was usually 
moved to a point above the shifting bars where there 
was a steady depth of water. Railways came later, 
following streams with monotonous regularity, and 
bridged streams on the site of the ancient ford. 
Hundreds of farms in these strategic locations became 
hamlets in the era of the stage and wagon, and blos- 
somed into cities on the advent of the railways. 
Behind this interesting evolution we see its secret — 
the soil-transporting power of water. Studies of this 
type founded on sound scientific reasoning, give a 



16 

basis frequently for the explanation of facts never 
otherwise understood. 

Before closing, the very recent and important devel- 
opment of aerial photography which will be invaluable 
to the writers of the histories of the late war, should 
be mentioned. When one considers the endless 
discussion of the past over positions of lines held and 
advances made it is not without a feeling of gratitude 
to these faithful men of daring that we recognize the 
basis they have laid for correct physiographical studies 
of the war, sector by sector. 

As no one factor explains a result, so no result is 
understood without the proper recognition of all 
factors which exert a control over it. The spirit of 
the day — our admiration for, and devotion to, truth- 
loving and truth-telling — demands a catholicity of 
temperament and a loathing of bias on the part 
of our historical writers. As never before the natural 
sciences have become the handmaidens of history, and 
every clarifying influence they exert, or suggestion 
they off er, must be hailed with attention and gratitude. 



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